Kieran Culkin Edges Out ‘Succession’ Costars to Win Best Actor at Golden Globes 2024

Eight months after Succession concluded its four-season run, Kieran Culkin swept the loaded best-actor-in-a-television-drama category, topping his television father, Brian Cox, and brother Jeremy Strong. In addition to beating out his Succession family members, Culkin nosed out Gary Oldman for Slow Horses, Pedro Pascal for The Last of Us, and Dominic West for The Crown in the loaded category.

“This is a nice moment for me,” Culkin said upon reaching the podium. “I was nominated for a Golden Globe like 20 years ago and I remember thinking I’d never be back in the room,” the actor said, referring to his 2003 Golden Globe nomination for Igby Goes Down. After voicing his appreciation for the award, he looked out in the audience toward a fellow nominee in the category and added, jokingly, “Suck it, Pedro.” 

While Culkin’s character, Roman, spent much of previous seasons playing the supporting role of Roy family joker, he came into front-runner focus in the show’s final season. It was Roman who took his father’s death the hardest, culminating with Culkin’s most powerful scene of the season: an Emmy-ready breakdown at the podium of his father’s VIP funeral in the penultimate episode, “Church and State.”

Speaking to Vanity Fair after the episode aired, Culkin revealed that he didn’t rehearse the sequence at all. “I just kind of looked at the lines vaguely and went, ‘I don’t want to look at this. I don’t want to plan or think about how this is gonna happen,’” Culkin said. The actor explained that the funeral was shot continuously in real time, so the first time James Cromwell delivered Uncle Ewan’s speech was the first time Culkin was hearing those words. When it was time for his character to take the podium after, Culkin was operating out of instinct.

“A lot of stuff happens on the show that is not planned or rehearsed or talked about [beforehand],” Culkin said. “When it happens, it’s really lovely and hard to recreate.”

Culkin had other heavyweight scenes this season: notably his mountaintop breakdown with Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) in “Kill List” and his evil election-night turn in “America Decides.” 

Tonight’s nomination was Culkin’s fifth; he was previously nominated for the first three seasons of Succession in the supporting-actor category and for his leading role in Igby Goes Down.